The present invention relates to laundry machinery apparatus and more particularly to an improved apparatus for imparting relative motion for engagement and disengagement or closing and opening of a cooperating press buck and press head of a garment and laundry press machine.
A number of garment and laundry press machines for moving a press head into and out of engagement with a press buck have long been known in the garment and laundry machinery art, attention being directed to such U.S. Pat. No. 2,971,281, issued to E. N. Neckel on Feb. 14, 1961; U.S. Pat. No. 3,490,159 issued to D. L. Radford et. al. on Jan. 20, 1970; U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,290, issued to Ake Anderson on Jul. 28, 1981; U.S. Pat. No. 4,399,624, issued to D. B. Ward on Aug. 23, 1983; and, U.S. Pat. No. 4,843,745, issued to G. L. Oberly on Jul. 4, 1989. For the most part, these and other head press activating mechanisms of prior garment and laundry pressing machinery have used standard air and steam circuitry to activate pivotal arm linkages, such linkages being connected to press heads which, in turn, reciprocally move into and out of pressing engagement with press bucks with steam being connected to the press.
These past garment and laundry pressing arrangements have been comparatively costly in the manufacture of numerous intricate parts and the assembly of these parts into operating machinery and often have presented problems in both maintenance and in parts replacement. Further, comparatively complex indexing machinery, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,535, issued to S. S. Gill on Nov. 19, 1991, has been required to move the press heads through a comparatively limited radius angle, which in turn restricts machinery use in pressing large garment and laundry articles and in the refined pressing of small garment and laundry articles which often require ready accessibility to the press buck for manual hand manipulation.
The present invention provides a comparatively inexpensive, economical and efficient garment and laundry press structure, recognizing and effectively modifying and utilizing rotary actuator structure heretofore known in the prior art. In this regard, attention is further directed to long known U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,738, issued to F. C. Eicher et. al. on Oct. 9, 1984; U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,875, issued to H. J. Amshoff, III on Oct. 4, 1988; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,453, issued to F. Eicher et. al. on Aug. 20, 1991. All three of these known patents disclose a pressure driven vane actuator disposed in a fixed chamber defining house with the vane actuator being keyed to a shaft to rotate the shaft for powering purposes. The present invention recognizes and avails itself of the structural teachings of these patents, modifying and utilizing the known structure in a new and unobvious manner to bring about a unique garment and laundry press arrangement heretofore unknown in the art.
Various other feature of the present invention will become obvious to one skilled in the garment and laundry press art upon reading the disclosure herein.